The Loving Story
In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in Virginia on charges of being married—the problem was he was white and she was black. Convicted of a felony for miscegenation, the couple were banished from Virginia. The Loving Story documents the legal battle that led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning state bans on interracial marriage as unconstitutional. Bottom line: segregation in America was always about sex.
The Horde
When the mother of the Great Khan is struck suddenly blind, and the shamans and fakirs of their vast realm fail, an Eastern Orthodox saint from faraway Moscow is summoned to work a miracle. The Horde is hindered by inappropriately voiced English-language overdubbing—it probably plays better in the original Russian and Mongolian—but is worthy for its detailed, richly costumed recreation of savage Central Asian spectacle in the aftermath of Genghis Khan.
“Rawhide: The Sixth Season Volume One”
The long-running western series was known in the day for its familiar theme song with the deathless chorus of “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’” to the crackling accompaniment of a bullwhip. Nowadays it’s best remembered as the show where Clint Eastwood gained fame as cowhand Rowdy Yates. “Rawhide” was essentially an endless cattle drive whose drovers encountered dubious characters on the trail; it was also a forum in the early ’60s for network television to cautiously confront such issues as racism and genocide.
